Huge concert tours sponsored by video game companies seem to be the biggest new music fad. After the Nintendo Fusion Tour had an overwhelmingly positive response earlier this year, headlined by Fall Out Boy and selling out nearly all of its dates, it only makes sense that Microsoft Corporation would try to take advantage of the same thing.

Headlining the Xbox 360 Tour is The Academy Is ., a band that, like Fall Out Boy before them, is on the Fueled By Ramen Records label and has seemingly gone from a group unheard to immensly popular almost overnight.

The band has only released one record, “Almost Here,” but its dedication to touring and promotion has garnered it top attention from the emo-rock loving younger generation.

Guitarist Mike Carden took some time out of his busy schedule as the guitarist for the Academy Is . to talk to Pulse about the band’s journey from high school to super-stardom, encompasing everything from tight pants to skipping college for the glory of rock ‘n’ roll.

Dan McClanahan: You guys played in Iowa a year-and-a-half ago as an opening band nobody had ever heard of. Last summer you played in Iowa again, performing to a sold-out crowd of screaming fans at the House of Bricks in Des Moines. Explain the quick success.

Mike Carden: The most important thing was word of mouth, it was Internet -based. I think – as far as the Internet goes – things travel very quickly. We’ve really kept up touring, man. We haven’t had a break in two years now. We’ve got a great label, Fueled By Ramen. We have great management, and we have a lot of great friends in the industry and in other bands that we have utilized and what not.

DM: You guys are very well groomed and you seem to have a definate sense of style. What’s it like maintaining that?

MC: I think it’s just like anything. You hang out with dudes and you start vibing with each other and liking the same things. You might have a TV show you quote or you have a pack of girls wearing the same thing. There was never a sit-down talk of anything, but we definitely influence each other in an unspoken way. People do things and people catch on and it’s just like ‘Cool, we actually look like a band.’

DM: What’s your take on tight jeans and emo boys that wear girl pants?

MC: I don’t mind it. I mean, hell, it’s all good. As the independent scene was growing, it was one of the true statements – the rocking gear for a guy to wear. Everything’s gotten much more tight recently. In the ’90s, things were baggy and all that, but now it’s becoming a lot like the fashion that came from the ’70s. That stuff is much cooler now – it’s all coming back.

DM: Tell me about the secret track you guys leaked on the Internet a while back, titled “Naked Peekaboo.”

MC: We were in Portland and we were at this hotel. It was Midtown, us and Gym Class Heroes on the Fall Out Boy tour. We had a few drinks and Travis [McCoy, singer for Gym Class Heroes], William [Beckett, singer for TAI], and the butcher, our drummer [Andy Mrotek], came up with this little diddy. We decided to record it as a joke – we thought it was really funny and kind of did it for ourselves and thought it would be fun to put it up for fans.

DM: Rumor has it there’s a new record in the works. What are the details?

MC: It’s a two-front war we fight. On one hand, we want to keep touring and supporting “Almost Here,” because we see that it’s working, it’s growing. On the other hand, we’re artists and we can’t wait to get some time off to work on getting in the studio, and we’re hungry to write material. After this tour we’re going to Japan and writing for a while up until we go to the UK with Fall Out Boy and start the Warped Tour. The last two years, we haven’t really had a break – we’ve played 400 or 500 shows and been on the road. We’re gonna take a little bit of time off to go ‘Wow, that was a crazy little ride.’ We’re gonna do some real writing, and I’m really excited for that.

DM: What’s it like playing sold-out shows to people belting out every lyric to every song?

MC: Obviously, it’s a great feeling. The crowd and people are really getting off on songs that William [Beckett] and I wrote two years ago, and that gets me very excited. I mean, I love touring and I like hanging out with friends and everything else, but at the end of the day, playing live is my absolute favorite thing to do. The best shows for me are the ones where you feel that connection with the crowd. Club size doesn’t matter. Sometimes there are just great vibes, and on this tour it’s been very easy to reach those vibes. People are stoked and they are excited to see us, and from the first chord we hit – it’s going. The band live right now is playing better than we ever have, both in a technical aspect and from a performance standpoint.

DM: Give me a brief history of the band.

MC: It was three years ago, almost four now. It was me and William [Beckett]. We talked at a Death Cab [For Cutie] show about putting a rock band together. From there we put together some stuff and did some smaller stuff on a friend’s label, and then the Fueled By Ramen thing happened and it sort of took off. I remember a lot of explaining to my parents why I wasn’t going to college and how I thought this was the best thing for me to do.

DM: Was it hard to convince them you didn’t want to go to college?

MC: Totally man – it’s very hard to do. Especially when you’re a senior in high school telling your counselor to ‘F—k off, I want to be a rock ‘n’ roller!’ Now that we’ve been successful, I’m not too salty about it. Everybody wanted me to go to college, but I wanted to do this. I didn’t really have a backup plan, you know? I was like ‘Well, I’m gonna do this. I know this guy named William [Beckett] and we’re gonna write songs together and go on tour.’

DM: So things are better with the parents now?

MC: Yes, they’re completely cool now. They’ve even had their moments where they were apologetic. I don’t mind my parents at all for what they did. They made me improve myself even more – writing better songs and putting together the best band I could. I think everything happens for a reason. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. Like, if you walked home right now and told your parents you were going to quit school and wanted to travel the world.

DM: I’d probably get laughed at.

MC: Precisely, but when you do it – you know – who knows? “Almost Here” has a lot of those metaphors. Get out there, it’s a big world. Make the decisions and the choices that you want to make, not what your school counselor says is the best thing. In high school, I think a lot of people were shot down. I knew some extremely talented people that never honed their craft because they were told to take it safe and go to college. A lot of teachers – I think – that don’t help you maybe are seeing our shirts in their hallways. The kids that are listening to our music I think are getting benefited in a real way and it’s having a real impact on them.